Flight 7 Is Missing

by Ken H. Fortenberry

  In other words, there was no reason for the financially strapped Payne to scrape together enough money for a one-way ticket to Honolulu unless something secretive, or perhaps sinister, was involved. All of this seemed to add up to just one conclusion: Whether he was on the plane or not, William Harrison Payne blew up Romance of the Skies and killed everyone aboard.

  Case closed.

  So, who was William Harrison Payne?

  That is as much a mystery today as it was when I first began looking into his life decades earlier. For the longest time, he simply didn’t exist other than in newspaper accounts of the crash and investigation. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of William Harrison Paynes out there, and with no obituary and precious little other biographical information to work with, I had to struggle to piece together a brief biography of his life. During the next few years I was able to develop some raw information about him, but many holes remained—and still remain.

  Payne was born December 15, 1915, in Braymer, Missouri, a tiny railroad town of fewer than 500 people, to Ward Payne and his seventeen-year-old wife, the former Ruth Elder. He was their second child; an older brother, David, had been born in California two years earlier. Ruth had moved to California when she was about ten years old and lived with an uncle on his farm near Sanger. In the 1920 census both David and William were listed as residents of the St. Catherine’s Orphanage in Orange County, California, having been abandoned by their parents. Presumably, Ward Payne was dead.

  By 1930, Ruth had moved to Nevada and was married to a man fourteen years her senior, Charles Edgar Wilcox, an automobile repairman. William was now living once again with mother, but his brother, now sixteen or seventeen years old, remained in California, living on his own. Harrison, as he was called at the time, played baseball for the local American Legion and was a Boy Scout. Ruth was listed as a nurse in the 1930 US census, but that was a bit unusual, because her only other employment had been as a retail salesperson in a department store and as a laundry worker. How she became a nurse, if indeed she was one, is a mystery that remains unanswered.

  On November 19, 1934, the eighteen-year-old William enlisted in the Navy as a seaman apprentice, and in 1937 he trained for six months at the submarine school in New London, Connecticut, specializing in radios and signals. He was later transferred to the submarine barracks at Pearl Harbor and served on several ships, primarily sub tenders, across the Pacific during World War II.

  He was transferred to Seattle shortly after the war ended, and it was there that he met his future wife, Harriet, a hairdresser recently divorced from Emil Theiler, a former shortstop and second basemen for minor league baseball teams in California and Washington State. Payne and Harriet were married in a private ceremony on October 19, 1945, at the First Methodist Church in Seattle. Payne’s mother, Ruth Wilcox, and her soon-to-be third husband, Lawrence Hansen, witnessed the wedding.

  Harriet’s early life, like that of William’s mother, is a bit of a mystery. Harriet Avah Hunter was born October 17, 1915, in Castoria, California, to James and Avah Cox Hunter. She graduated from Manteca High School and married Emil Theiler on April 9, 1934, in Carson City, Nevada. She was nineteen years old. The Theilers had one child, Emil Jr. (Kip), born six years later, on June 25, 1940. The family lived in Castoria, where Emil Sr. worked for the Spreckels Sugar Company. Harriet and Theiler divorced in the midforties, after which she moved to Seattle. For the rest of her life she told people a bald-faced lie—that she had been a widow when she married Payne.

  On Aug. 27, 1946, Harriet gave birth to Michael Harrison (Kim) Payne while her husband was stationed at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard northeast of San Francisco, and less than two years later the couple was in Honolulu, where Payne was stationed once again. In 1949 the Paynes were transferred back to California. They lived in Manteca until 1953, when they moved to Stockton, where they lived until he was discharged from the Navy in 1956. Shortly thereafter he and Harriet purchased the Roxbury Lodge in Scott Bar, and their lives began to unravel.

  Wake Island, The Pacific Ocean

  Monday, December 17, 1956

  “Dear Mom:

  “It’s been so long since I saw you that I almost forgot what you look like. Sure do miss you, although it is not as bad now that I am on a trip. When I was home it was terrible. I missed ‘Little Man,’ too. I would catch myself sneaking into his room not wanting to awaken him and then realize that he was gone. [When my father wrote this, my mother was in South Carolina with my little brother, Craig, while her mother was dying of cancer.]

  “The boys seemed to be doing just fine. They thought of the stay with the neighbors as a big adventure. I forgot to take the African Violets over to Whitneys before I left so I guess they will be dead when I get back. I was busy all day before I left at 10:30 p.m. The house is in pretty good shape except the beds and the kitchen floor.

  “I’ll be in Japan on Christmas Day. It won’t be much of a Christmas again this year. We always hope for next year. I wonder what it will be next Christmas?

  “I’m sorry, Mom, that I can’t do anything for you, but we have to look after our family. You stay as long as you like and if you wish, I will try to get an emergency leave when I come home. I don’t want to leave the boys farmed out too long. My parents deserted me when I was five and left me to a strange world among strangers. I want to give my boys all the love I can. I miss all of you very much. When I get home, I will probably be home for 10-15 days maybe so you can stop worrying about the boys then.

  “Honey, there isn’t much I can say about your mother. I know hope is useless, and life protracted in misery is not worth much, so I’ll say, 'God bless all of you,' and hope that will suffice. Love you, Mom. Write to me, address on envelope through Dec. 26th, then home.

  “Love, Dad”

  David Pawlowski is a self-described conspiracy nut. He also just happens to be one of the most brilliant men I have ever known. He was a Dow Chemical Company engineer when we first met, and his ability to understand complex things, from aircraft engines to chemical compounds, is astounding.

  Purely as a background source, David joined the search for my father’s killer sometime in the early 2000s, and has provided valuable advice, assistance, and insight ever since. His motive has always been simple: the entire Lee Clack family perished on Romance of the Skies, and Clack was a Dow executive who, like Pawlowski, called Midland, Michigan, home.

  Pawlowski believed from the very beginning of the search that lodge owner Payne was responsible for the crash, either as a suicidal murderer or as a coconspirator with his wife in a murder-for-insurance plot. Payne’s background had been full of mysteries from the outset, and Pawlowski has never hesitated to offer his opinions or to chase leads down in some very unusual ways, always with his own time and money.

  One of those unusual ways was something I had never heard of and still don’t fully understand, but it turned out to be fascinating. It’s called “remote viewing,” or RV to those familiar with it. Whatever it is called, I was more than happy when Pawlowski shelled out his hard-earned money to ask the psychics for assistance in solving the mystery of Flight 7.

  Remote viewing has been around for decades, and even though it is scoffed at by many mainstream scientific experts, it has been used in the past by no less than the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency to assist in spying and other information-gathering activities. Simply stated, remote viewers are clairvoyants who are “tasked” under controlled conditions to use their abilities to gather information on “targets,” which can be persons, places, or things. The targets may be from the past; the targets may be from the future. In all cases the targets are undisclosed, separated, and hidden from the remote viewers by distance, sometimes even by continents.

  In most remote viewing sessions, the viewers (usually working from their own homes) are given general “frontloaded information” and some strict rules to follow. For example, in one of the Flight 7 RV sessions, the viewers were given the following
information to narrow the focus: “The target is an event. Describe the target with emphasis on causes of the event and persons of interest.”

  The viewers were given photographs of Crosthwaite and my father (with no identifying information), but nothing else.

  Pawlowski funded several remote viewings, the first conducted in 2001 by RV experts Jim and Lori Williams of Amarillo, Texas, who tasked four experienced viewers they described this way:

  “Viewer #128 has 15 years’ experience as a Controlled Remote Viewer and has an overall accuracy level of 86% in the professional Viewer Association database. This viewer has a great deal of experience working as a professional both nationally and internationally and has worked a broad variety of target types.

  “Viewer #418 has 11 years’ experience as a Remote Viewer and has an overall accuracy rating in the training database of 84%. This viewer’s strength is in describing people and locations.

  “Viewer #546 has four years’ experience as a remote viewer. This viewer works internationally and has a high level of accuracy.

  “Viewer #A32 has worked as an intuitive and a remote viewer for many years and is known internationally for a high degree of accuracy.”

  Their reports were fascinating, and the Williamses offered these summaries:

  Viewer #546 described the event as energy and gave a list of descriptors for that energy with the final perception of a “shutting-down sound.”

  Viewer #418 described the event with interesting perceptions of motion and sound. The cause of the event was something that caused a very intense impact.

  Viewer #A32 described the event in terms of land and motion, where motion meets land. This viewer determined the event was a plane crash very quickly, then gave good descriptors and sketches. The cause of the event was viewed as accident, speed, and broken components.

  Viewer #128 provided a description of the airplane, four individuals, and their activities. Using a timeline, the viewer described the time prior to the event, during the event, and a short time after the event. The cause of the event was described as a “failing,” with descriptors and detailed sketches of the “failing.”

  The Williamses concluded this about the viewings:

  “When interpreting viewer information, it is important to realize that information comes to the viewer in the form of symbolism, metaphors and allegories. If the viewer has no personal frame of reference for the target, the subconscious mind presents information in a form understandable to the viewer. Therefore, it is necessary to determine what the information represents. It may not be an exact replica of the target.”

  The most interesting and detailed observations came from Viewer #128, who said the event occurred in a “steel-like metallic man-made object” with a “glassed-in front area where the man-made is controlled.”

  That sounded strikingly like a Boeing Stratocruiser. He even sketched what was clearly an airplane cockpit, and it was about as close to a Stratocruiser as anyone without professional training could draw.

  He said that prior to the event two men were talking and laughing “with no sense of anything being wrong.” The weather was nice and the temperature inside the man-made was cool.

  Then something happened. Something terrible.

  “Fifteen minutes prior to the event, there is something red which is fluttering. Strange smell. Smoky, burning rubber smell. The men in the man-made are concerned, confused, looking around. There is a grinding noise, chortling sounds, sputtering.

  “Over the course of the next fifteen minutes before the event, there is a jerking motion up and down. Things are falling as the man-made tips to one side. There is a desperate attempt to right the man-made and a desperate attempt to control the man-made.

  “There is yelling: ‘I can’t maintain altitude! Grab it, Jerry! Hold it! Hold it!’ Closer to the moment of the event itself, there is droning sound, huge vibrating, everything angles down.

  “Man-made is moving very fast. There is no control. The men inside the man-made are panicked, surprised, caught off guard, not expecting this. At the moment of the event, the man-made is soaring down diagonally, impacting the ground. Loud sound. The man-made is hitting the ground at an angle on the land. . . .

  “The impact is hard, noisy, deafening, roaring, fiery-bright momentarily. The event causes crumpling of the man-made, mashing of steel and metal. Sharp impact. The man-made seems to be flaming. The flaming seems to be coming from the rear of the man-made.”

  My God. Symbolism, metaphors, and allegories aside, Viewer #128 seemed to be describing the final minutes of Flight 7 except for it striking land instead of the ocean. Even the “flaming” after the man-made crashed seemed to dovetail perfectly with the CAB report that a fire had occurred after the plane hit the ocean. But there was more:

  “Later (perhaps an hour or less), tearing sounds. Flesh being torn. Lots of blood and guts. Dragging motion. Big carcass. Open, fresh, warm wet, dragging motion. Bony, sinewy being drug away from the site.”

  That sounded amazingly close to a description of the bloodthirsty sharks that had torn into the nineteen bodies found floating in the Pacific more than a week after the crash.

  It was a fascinating report and good reading, but nothing conclusive. Certainly no smoking gun, but a lot of information to absorb and consider.

  A few years later, Pawlowski contracted with Dr. Angela Thompson Smith, a psychologist and former research nurse at Manchester University in England, to direct another viewing. Dr. Smith, a founding director and member of the International Remote Viewing Association, is considered one of the world’s leading remote-viewing experts, with more than thirty years of experience in psychology, parapsychology, and remote viewing.

  She tasked sixteen remote viewers, voluntary members of the Nevada Remote Viewing Group, and they perceived indications of a fire, gave descriptions of the plane, and saw what she called “an anomalous someone watching.”

  “In addition, they gave descriptions of an individual and connected technology, emotions perceived at the event, and what may have happened prior to the crash,” she reported.

  So, what was the bottom line? Was it an accident or sabotage? If it was an accident, what caused it? If it was sabotage, who perpetrated the crime and how did they do it?

  The viewers were contradictory in what they saw. Some said the crash was the result of sabotage. Others said it was caused by a faulty propeller. Another said the plane was destroyed because someone on board knew secrets and had to be killed.

  I really hadn’t expected the psychics to solve the case and end the search for my father’s killer, but from a layman’s perspective the report seemed to be little more than a mishmash of bunk and a waste of Pawlowski’s money. Dr. Smith’s conclusion left me even more convinced that the remote viewing had been worthless:

  “Definitions of the term ‘romance’ have historically meant a tale based on legend, chivalric love and adventure, or the supernatural: and a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or place and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious. In other words, was the viewing of the Romance of the Skies a result of overriding expectation despite the blind-tasking: telepathic overlay, or actual data? These questions can only be answered when the remains of the Romance of the Skies are located and retrieved from the depths of the Pacific.”

  To me, the report was just psychic mumbo jumbo, albeit creatively written, even almost poetic. Dr. Smith presented her report to the 2016 convention of the International Remote Viewers Association, and I stashed it away in my files. I didn’t give it another thought until three years later, when I once again began reading every document I had accumulated in my decades-long research.

  I mentally kicked myself in the butt when I read it again in 2017, more closely this time—and learned that an entirely new theory deserved my attention.

  As it turns out, a few days before Dr. Smith had made her presentation to the IRVA she had coffee with an RV colleague who had been one
of the viewers in the case. She gave him preliminary feedback about what had been seen.

  And then he stunned her with a theory of his own:

  Viewer LM, a former Pan Am captain who had flown Stratocruisers himself in the 1950s, told her that Stratocruiser cabins were warmed by a gas-fired cabin heater like those used in many homes. He said that the heater was in an area behind the cockpit, close to one of the wings.

  “He also mentioned that these often developed cracks in the metal and would leak carbon monoxide into the cabin. If this happened, the pilot, crew, and passengers would have lost consciousness, and this could have crashed the plane. LM was shown the schematics of the plane and this further clarified his theory,” Dr. Smith told me.

  A cabin heater? That was a new angle, but I was skeptical of his claim that they “often developed cracks” that leaked carbon monoxide into the cabin, because if that had been the case, the issue would have been well established and likely corrected. Still, the plane had flown more than ninety miles off course in less than thirty minutes, no Mayday calls had officially been sent, and carbon monoxide had been found in many of the recovered bodies.

  Adding to the mystery was the fact that most, though not all, of the recovered bodies had life preservers on. Could the plane have simply flown on its own into the ocean with an unconscious, incapacitated, or disoriented crew in the cockpit?

  I had toyed with that idea for years, wondering if vacationing pilot Robert Alexander, seated in the rear-cabin first-class section, had sensed an emergency in the cockpit and rushed up the cabin aisle, warning those along the way to put on their life preservers. Interestingly, Alexander’s body was among those recovered, and an autopsy revealed that he may have been alive, but likely unconscious, for several days after the crash, just bobbing on the ocean.